Tuesday, November 30, 2010

I am a bit frustrated with Apple's policies, but this one looks like it's going to take the cake: Jobs is apparently working with Murdoch to come up with a new digital "newspaper" specifically and exclusively for the iPad.

It's not enough that, for instance, the iPad has very limited communications, such as restricted Bluetooth access, or that the iPhone was (outside of France, where the company's policy was ruled illegal) only sold along with a specific range of data packages from a single mobile provider – and the phone does not officially support tethering.

No, the deal with Murdoch is not just a nuisance, but potentially a threat to democracy. Fox, of course, is the network that practically called the 2000 residential election between Bush and Gore. At a time when the state of Florida was saying that the election was too close to call and that discarded ballots would have to be recounted, the network announced that "Florida goes to Bush," and the other networks then repeated Fox's claim. In effect, Gore was on the defensive from that point on.

A few years later, Fox played the drum roll in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. I wrote about the matter back in 2002 in German, but even if you don't read German you will enjoy the screenshot here, which shows how Fox was claiming that the death of Saddam Hussein would somehow boost stock prices.

If this deal comes about and Apple begins to promote Murdoch's minions, I'm going to reconsider future purchases of the company's products.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

It's not news to those of us who studied history a bit, especially US and German history, but the New York Times recently reported that the US actively recruited some high-ranking and Nazi officials after World War II to get their expertise.